How managers can build trust in strategic alliances: a meta-analysis on the central trust-building mechanisms

Trust is an important driver of superior alliance performance. Alliance managers are influential in this regard because trust requires active involvement, commitment and the dedicated support of the key actors involved in the strategic alliance. Despite the importance of trust for explaining alliance performance, little effort has been made to systematically investigate the mechanisms that managers can use to purposefully create trust in strategic alliances. We use Parkhe’s (1998b) theoretical framework to derive nine hypotheses that distinguish between process-based, characteristic-based and institutional-based trust-building mechanisms. Our meta-analysis of 64 empirical studies shows that trust is strongly related to alliance performance. Process-based mechanisms are more important for building trust than characteristic- and institutional-based mechanisms. The effects of prior ties and asset specificity are not as strong as expected and the impact of safeguards on trust is not well understood. Overall, theoretical trust research has outpaced empirical research by far and promising opportunities for future empirical research exist

Consumer perceptions of co-branding alliances: Organizational dissimilarity signals and brand fit

This study explores how consumers evaluate co-branding alliances between dissimilar partner firms. Customers are well aware that different firms are behind a co-branded product and observe the partner firms’ characteristics. Drawing on signaling theory, we assert that consumers use organizational characteristics as signals in their assessment of brand fit and for their purchasing decisions. Some organizational signals are beyond the control of the co-branding partners or at least they cannot alter them on short notice. We use a quasi-experimental design and test how co-branding partner dissimilarity affects brand fit perception. The results show that co-branding partner dissimilarity in terms of firm size, industry scope, and country-of-origin image negatively affects brand fit perception. Firm age dissimilarity does not exert significant influence. Because brand fit generally fosters a benevolent consumer attitude towards a co-branding alliance, the findings suggest that high partner dissimilarity may reduce overall co-branding alliance performance

Contracting outsourced services with collaborative key performance indicators

While service outsourcing may benefit from the application of performance‐based contracts (PBCs), the implementation of such contracts is usually challenging. Service performance is often not only dependent on supplier effort but also on the behavior of the buying firm. Existing research on performance‐based contracting provides very limited understanding on how this challenge may be overcome. This article describes a design science research project that develops a novel approach to buyer–supplier contracting, using collaborative key performance indicators (KPIs). Collaborative KPIs evaluate and reward not only the supplier contribution to customer performance but also the customer's behavior to enable this. In this way, performance‐based contracting can also be applied to settings where supplier and customer activities are interdependent, while traditional contracting theories suggest that output controls are not effective under such conditions. In the collaborative KPI contracting process, indicators measure both supplier and customer (buying firm) performance and promote collaboration by being defined through a collaborative process and by focusing on end‐of‐process indicators. The article discusses the original case setting of a telecommunication service provider experiencing critical problems in outsourcing IT services. The initial intervention implementing this contracting approach produced substantial improvements, both in performance and in the relationship between buyer and supplier. Subsequently, the approach was tested and evaluated in two other settings, resulting in a set of actionable propositions on the efficacy of collaborative KPI contracting. Our study demonstrates how defining, monitoring, and incentivizing the performance of specific processes at the buying firm can help alleviate the limitations of traditional performance‐based contracting when the supplier's liability for service performance is difficult to verify

Messung des Organisationserfolgs

Die Messung des Erfolgs einer Organisation stellt ein vielschichtiges und praxisrelevantes Problem dar. Sie ist Teil des Organisations-Controllings, speziell des Performance-Controllings. In der Praxis stehen vielfältige Kriterien und Modelle zur Erfolgsmessung zur Verfügung. Diese Vielfalt ist Resultat der Uneinigkeit darüber, wie organisationale Effizienz und Effektivität bzw. der Organisationserfolg adäquat erfasst werden können. Schon die Abgrenzung dieser Konstrukte ist uneindeutig. Die vorgenommenen Messungen erlauben somit einen großen Interpretationsspielraum. Das Ziel dieses Beitrags besteht darin, Indikatoren herauszuarbeiten und systematisch darzustellen, mit denen organisationale Effektivität und Effizienz als Dimensionen des Organisationserfolgs abgebildet werden können. Dazu werden Definitionen und begriffliche Abgrenzungen von Effektivität, Effizienz und Erfolg vorgenommen und ein Überblick über gängige Messungen, Indikatoren und Modelle herausgearbeitet. Darauf aufbauend wird ein eigener Analyserahmen entwickelt, wie der Organisationserfolg gemessen und interpretiert werden kann. Abschließend werden Implikationen für Forschung und Praxis diskutiert

Alliance governance mechanisms in the face of disruption

Existing academic literature has discussed contracts and relational governance as the key mechanisms that help alliance partners address problems of cooperation and coordination. However, when an alliance undergoes disruption, the nature and extent of such problems may change and therefore the value of these mechanisms may change. This study advances a dynamic perspective on alliance governance by examining the impact of disruption and subsequent adjustment on the value of alliance governance mechanisms. To this end, we longitudinally studied a revelatory case of a research and development alliance in the veterinary drug industry that experienced disruption triggered by an internal restructuring at one of the partner companies. We approached the evidence with a fine-grained typology that builds on two dimensions that underlie governance mechanisms: the means to enforce their ruling principles (contractual versus relational) and the level of codification of these principles (formal versus informal). Based on our findings, we (1) show the significance of this revised typology, which suggests that contractual governance is not necessarily formal and relational governance is not necessarily informal; (2) provide a more systematic discussion of the tradeoffs that the various mechanisms entail and how these are altered through disruption and adjustment dynamics; and (3) analyze how the interplay between different types of governance mechanisms evolves following disruption and adjustment. Overall, our study brings the concept of disruption to the dynamic perspective of alliance governance and highlights the contingent value of alliance governance mechanisms

Costs of partner search and selection in strategic alliances

This study examines the costs of alliance partner search and selection and their antecedents. Drawing on transaction cost economics and the network perspective on inter-organizational relationships, the findings drawing on survey-based data from a sample of 83 firms in the German telecommunications industry reveal that partner search and selection costs are closely connected but differentially affected by task- and company-related factors. When firms must make alliance-specific investments, search and selection costs increase. A firm’s number of current alliances decreases them, while neither alliance scope nor firm performance significantly affect search and selection costs. Additional analyses show that alliance-specific investments especially increase search costs but do not affect selection costs, while the initiating firm’s performance decreases search costs but it does not reduce selection costs